


Truth to Power

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 00:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21519067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: The Marines Malevolent have a long and bitter past, shunned by most elements of the Imperium, despised by brother Space Marines. For years they have avoided the censure of the Inquisition - but as the Great Rift tears apart the galaxy, there can be little room for indulgence, and as the mighty and disgraced alike fall under suspicion, the Chapter must answer for crimes both real and imagined.An ongoing story.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

It was close to midnight when Captain Vale arrived.

There had been a suggestion of chains and iron in the looks his escorts had been giving him the entire way down. From the wind-whipped landing pad on a craggy spit of land, through a series of descending elevators and red-lit staircases, they had never taken their hands off stun batons and neural prods. In their matte-black carapace and slitted helms branded with the Inquisition’s red mark, the small squad would certainly have intimidated most who found themselves here.

To a creature who could spit acid and overtopped even the tallest of the bagmen by a full head, it was woefully insufficient. Vale had kept his amusement to himself, his head lowered, even as he committed every twist and turn in their journey to memory. Let them believe him suitably cowed by would-be jailors or the supposed grandeur of their court.

The facility was made in the old style, the floors polished marble beneath plump crimson carpets, walls sheathed in pearl dredged from the surrounding oceans and inlaid with fine traces of gold. Grim saints and punished sinners glared down from tapestries and framed paintings. At first blush, it was inspirational, a display of wealth and power that extended to those who moved through the thoroughfares and hallways. Robes of soft silk, samite bodygloves, and ornate powered armour were the uniform of those the small group marched past.

All of them affected a haughty disinterest, sparing the Space Marine the smallest of glances before continuing on their way or returning to their hushed conversations. It made him feel half a Scout again. The best kind of invisibility wasn’t in remaining unseen - it was making people not _want_ to see you.

That willful blindness was endemic to the Imperium. Vale’s enhanced senses let him scent the sudden spring of sweat from those who caught his eye, see the unconscious tensing as their bodies prepared for fight or flight. So, too, could he smell the rot and mould beneath the marble. All the glimmer and gold couldn’t hide it any more than they could disguise the micro-fissures where the foundations had shifted, where the facility had been exposed to the titanic pressure of the deep sea.

The Inquisitorial complex was sinking. By inches, by centuries, but it would come apart all the same. Nothing - not the sacred genius of the Mechanicus, not the prayers of the enlightened Ministorum, not the iron will of the Ordos - could prevent that. There was no better metaphor for the dark days they found themselves in.

Ahead of the group stood a woman in no hurry to make room. Her grey hair drawn up in a sharp bob, robes of dull grey, hands folded atop a mottled cane of heartwood - Vale almost dismissed her as a senile scribe who had wandered away from her duties. It was the reaction of the Inquisitorial bagmen that made him look twice - the way they fanned out as though they were approaching a wounded, feral Ork rather than an elderly servant.

‘Madam Advocate,’ was all the time the squad’s leader had to say before the woman pounded her cane on the floor. Chips of marble shook loose. The squad leader winced and fell silent.

‘I gave specific instructions,’ the woman began, voice crisp and clear, ‘That he be brought to me upon arrival, with speed, and here I find you, Thom, sneaking down a tertiary arterial nowhere _close_ to my chambers. Are you lost, boy? Do we need to fit you with a tracker and vox-implant and steer you about like a servitor?’

‘Madam Advocate-’ the squad leader attempted and was again silenced by the crack of wood on broken marble.

‘Specific instructions, Thom! No, don’t tell me, you were countermanded by the Judges, and off you hopped you like a good little boy, eager to please. You’re quite fortunate I was here! Fortunate indeed.’ She waved one gnarled hand in dismissal. ‘Since you cannot seem to find the way, I shall lead our guest in your stead. Off with you.’

‘I was to bring Captain Vale directly to-’

‘Me, yes. And then the Seat. I know your orders, Thom, I wrote them. The Judges won’t mind a little delay while we confer. The good Captain will attend them shortly, you may depend on that.’

‘Your safety, Madam Advocate-’

Another wave of her hand, another dismissal. ‘If our guest wished us harm, he’d have taken your toys and fed them to you long before this, Thom. But if you’re concerned, I’ll have an oath from him.’ She nodded to the hulking Astartes. ‘Do you swear to do no harm, Captain?’

Vale grinned. ‘Nothing permanent.’

‘What a good boy. You could learn a thing or two from him, Thom. Back to your masters - we’ll be along shortly.’

It was well that the Inquisitorial escort was wearing their helms - it barely hid their shame as they looked, uncertain, at each-other and their leader whose shoulders had slumped in dejection. Caught on the horns of authority, between an immediate superior and a far-away order, Thom chose the better part of valour. He made the sign of the aquila and turned smartly, the squad on his heels as they marched away.

Leaving Vale alone in the hall with the elderly woman.

‘Come closer,’ she spoke, ‘My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.’

He stepped forward, directly under the soft lumens set just beneath the ceiling’s skin. The light brought his scars into sharp relief - the bluntness of his brow, the stubble that coarsened his chin, the deep swell of patience in his eyes.

The woman tilted her head. ‘Throne,’ she said. ‘They said you were ugly, but no mention was made of how short.’

Vale’s grin widened. Canines glinted. ‘They didn’t feed me enough as a neophyte, Madam Advocate.’

It didn’t sound like a joke.

‘Well, no matter,’ she replied, ‘It will not be added to the list of charges, though it certainly does you no favours. Could the Marines Malevolent not spare someone more handsome? More heroic? More…’

‘Important?’

‘Yes, certainly that. The Inquisition has questions for your Chapter. That a Master of Recruits has been dispatched to answer them is, frankly, an insult.’

‘As I’ve come to discover,’ the Space Marine chuckled, the sound like a ferrocrete grinder, ‘That’s deliberate.’

The woman’s eyes narrowed. The cane tap-tapped on the marble. ‘You have few friends remaining to you. Is it wise to be pulling the felid’s tail when the Maledictum has cast its baneful light upon our Imperium?’

‘Seems to me you have a lot of tail to pull, Madam Advocate. We haven’t run out in eight thousand years.’

‘True enough,’ she conceded. ‘The Inquisition has always been stuffed with paranoiacs and neurotics, and for the most part they are kept in line. But the Great Rift has given them mandate. Roboute Guilliman’s disfranchisement of the Ministorum and his creation of the Logos has given them a _reason_ to be afraid. He claims to speak with the Emperor’s voice, and that may be true, but it is not so long ago that we warred over a False Primarch. We jump at shadows, Captain Vale. Your Chapter would not be the first to be hastily and _permanently_ censured.’

The grin vanished. ‘I know. That’s why I’m here.’

‘It would be foolish to-’ in mid-sentence, the Advocate’s eyes lit with understanding. The cane stopped tapping. ‘Throne, the _arrogance_ of you Astartes. You’re not here to answer questions. You’re here to _ask_ them, to gauge what favour remains to your Chapter.’

Vale inclined his head in respect. ‘Well noticed, Madam Advocate. As you say, we have few friends.’

‘But you’re looking to change that.’

‘We are.’

‘We?’ she challenged, ‘Or you, Captain Vale? You answer for the Chapter. That does not mean you _speak_ for it.’

‘I don’t believe the Judges will make that distinction, Madam Advocate.’

‘You would wager your life, your traditions, the possibility of an _excommunicate traitoris_ edict on that hypothesis?’

The Space Marine folded his arms. He tilted his head in a perfect imitation of the Advocate’s earlier gesture. ‘Wouldn’t you? Or did you want this meeting out of nothing more than curiosity? You command respect and honour on this battlefield, Madam Advocate. You are a veteran of these political games. You know my judgement will poison all it touches. And yet here you are.’

She was silent a moment, considering a reply. Her eyes went away from Vale’s face, to the ceiling above, where censers and icons of the Inquisition hung on heavy black chains. The weight of them was tremendous, the links of steel pulled tight. The burden was tremendous.

And the court was sinking. Inch by inch. Year by year.

If nothing was done, they would all drown together, innocent and guilty alike.

‘And yet,’ she said, finally, ‘Here I am. Caterin Marguiles, your defence. For all the good it will do us.’

The grin was back. ‘So what’s our first step, Madam Advocate?’

‘We find you some proper clothes, not this stinking plate.’ She sniffed. ‘Ugly and short I can tolerate, but all three is just too much.’


	2. The Seat Beneath The Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Advocate Caterin and Captain Vale deepen their association, both seeking to understand the motivations of the other - and if they can be trusted.

Candles glimmered about the recessed bathing pool, cupped in the stylised hands of weeping saints. The lumens had been dimmed but not extinguished, leaving the chamber in a state of flickering dusk. The only sound was the low chug of water filtration as it exchanged the cloudy filth and grime for purified sea-water that still stung with a trace of salt. Camphor and musky perfume were underscored by the bitter scent of machine oil from discarded power armour, and the uneasy scent of dried blood that sluiced from the pool’s occupant.

Reposed, at rest, seated deep enough within the cleansing font that only his upper body showed above the surface, Captain Vale was more weathered statue than a man.

The proportions of his scarred body were heroic in the manner of a monument, and unnatural in the way that granite should not move, that the broad chest puckered with the ugly wounds of interface sockets should not rise and fall in a steady rhythm, that the great shoulders should not roll like breakers meeting the shore.

Behind the Space Marine were two humans in half-robes, body-servants called in haste. Concealed by their discreet clothing, they were faceless, sexless - but both had blanched when they saw the pool’s occupant. Both were visibly relieved when Caterin explained that their usual services were not required. Now they anointed Vale’s flesh with herbs and unguents, bases and perfumes, washing away the accumulated detritus of his last campaign, hands soft and wise in the arts of pleasure kneading transhuman flesh.

In the half-light, the body-servants appeared more like masons in smeared smocks, shaping the brutish body of a golem. Caterin could not help but think of the Emperor at that moment, His divine will giving birth to these creatures, these Astartes, coaxing new life from the genetic clay of man.

She shivered. Vale’s eyes opened, fixing on the movement, muscles tensing like a jungle cat.

‘A chill, Madam Advocate?’ he asked. ‘Or something else?’

Caterin shook her head, forced a smile. ‘Nothing. I am an old woman, that is all.’

‘Too old to indulge?’

The comment was pointed and it bristled. Captain Vale was too much a diplomat to let his disapproval show openly, but the Space Marines were not known to employ serfs in such a manner, though out of respect or indifference to mortal pleasures it was impossible to say. It was a question that she resented the necessity of answering at all - not for what it said of the Seat Beneath the Sea alone, but for what the warrior would infer of her.

Accordingly, Caterin chose to answer carefully. ‘The bonded serve in many ways, Captain. They are majordomos, caterers, messengers, even lesser advocates if the situation demands. They have sworn to no faction within the Seat and their integrity is beyond question. I would advise you to leave your prejudice behind when we appear before the Judges.’

‘I’m familiar with the historical use of concubines in the Imperium, Madame Advocate.’ Vale arched his neck as one of the body-servants produced a straight-edge razor, the other a lathering cream. ‘I have no prejudice. What are Noble Houses or shared power-structures other than the spreading of power among concubines, either singular or plural? There are poorer ways to encourage loyalty. I was asking after _you_.’

 _Of course._ It was a reminder that the Space Marine wasn’t the savage he portrayed himself as. And what care would he have of mortal practices, regardless?

‘No, I do not,’ Caterin replied. ‘I am afraid, skilled as they are, they cannot provide what I seek.’

‘Seek? Did you lose something?’

She shot the bathing warrior a glare. The cream applied, the razor snickering down the curve of his throat, he lounged utterly without concern. ‘Yes,’ she snapped, ‘But that’s hardly your concern.’

‘We have time.’

‘We-’

‘And I’d like to know.’ Vale’s eyes were no longer lidded, but attentive, engaged. ‘I’d like to understand any ally. My cause isn’t exactly popular, you are aware.’

No arguing that. But still. ‘Yes, Captain, but…’ Caterin paused. ‘It is…’

‘Untoward? Shameful? Socially maladaptive?’

‘No. It is no longer my life. I gave it up to serve at the Seat, where I believed I could do good. Where I _have_ done good, you understand, I do not regret my decision, only… only what was left behind. What was left unsaid.’

Vale nodded. The servant was too slow to withdraw the razor. The edge met flesh - which did not yield. ‘I know that feeling,’ he continued as though unaware of the accident and the murmuring apologies. ‘Might be that’s one of the reasons I’m here, after all. Too much unsaid for too long.’

There was little point concealing it. Caterin ran a hand through the strands that had come loose from her grey bob, tucking them back behind one ear. ‘This may surprise you, but I served with the Adepta Sororitas for many years.’

‘You are a warrior still, Madam Advocate.’

‘I will assume that is a compliment.’

A grin lit by candlelight. ‘From a member of the Adeptus Astartes, it is the highest.’

‘Even if I saw no battle?’

‘There are a hundred ways to wage a war, Madam Advocate. Some of the fiercest campaigns are fought without a blade or bolter. Trust me.’

At first, Caterin had taken an immediate dislike to the Space Marine’s smile. He only seemed to show his teeth when mocking, as though he were laughing at some joke that only he and his kin were privy to. But now, it seemed without malice. There was no superiority to it. If there _was_ a joke, perhaps the Captain saw it being played on himself and hid his acceptance behind a shield of teeth.

_He sees the tilt in the game, and yet he plays on._

‘I bow to your wisdom, then.’

‘No need to get up, Madam Advocate.’

Caterin marshalled her thoughts, hands kneading at her robe. She stilled them with a conscious effort. She had just pronounced herself free of shame - and yet, the words still had to be dragged out. ‘I served in the Orders Famulous, with distinction. To tell the truth, there has been no official severance of my ties - I came here in an official capacity. Not in my current position and influence, of course, but I am not unaware or ungrateful to my sisters for leaving me to my duties. No recall, no expectation of reports - they must believe I serve a high calling, here.’

‘And do you?’

‘Would I have been accepted into the Sororitas if my faith was not strong, Captain?’

‘You remind me of my Sergeant,’ Vale muttered. He grimaced, then waved off another apology from the body-servant who had failed to cut him. The stubble was nearly shorn away, revealing smooth olive skin. ‘Always answering questions with one of his own, and knowing the answer to both before he does.’

‘You need someone to remind you that you’re not the smartest person in every room, Captain.’

Vale snorted. ‘I certainly don’t feel like it here.’

‘Good.’

‘Keep on with your tale before I slink under these waters in shame and drown myself, Madam Advocate.’

‘What?’ Caterin was momentarily nonplussed. ‘Is this possible?’

‘No. That’s what the third lung is for. Keep on regardless.’

She resettled herself. The poolside chairs were made to be laid in, using the overhead lumens on a tanning setting, a luxurious and vain indulgence. Residing within the complex for so long made most of the Seat’s population pale, but then again, little enough of the Imperium lived and worked beneath natural light. It was a curious affectation, all told, and it made the seats damnably uncomfortable to sit in for any length of time.

The razor finished its last downward sweep, the bristles falling like thick black petals. Next, the body-servants would apply a mixture that would cleanse and purify the skin - needless for a Space Marine, but it was traditional and it smelt like hazel. That was reason enough.

‘It was on Uldan Primaris,’ Caterin continued, watching the body-servants go to work again. ‘I was an attache to a third-circle noble family. A good position for the journeywoman I was at the time, and a mark of the regard my superiors had, I like to think. Nothing special or secret. A lovely family with a modest estate and tidy chapel. A long and pure bloodline. Truth be told, there was little for me to do - tutor the young boys, accompany Lord Hoster to the fetes, and learn the ways of Imperial nobility. I had a surfeit of private time and was encouraged to take it. Knowing little of the capital and knowing it would not be right to presume upon the Hosters in a personal way, I spent my time in the only place familiar and acceptable to me.’

‘Your Order had a convent on Uldan?’

‘Not mine,’ she smiled in the warm glow of memory. ‘An Order of battle-sisters, the Thorned Chalice. Mostly ceremonial, as the whole sub-sector was staunchly compliant, but they would go out on marches or in their Rhinos, be a symbol of spiritual authority. The Canonness had an official place at the planetary council, though she rarely took part in any voting. They were welcoming, intense - so different from the quiet reserve I knew before.’

‘I’ve met them on the battlefield,’ Vale said. ‘I know the reputation and the reality, Madam Advocate. Got into a fist-fight with one harpy over claiming an Orkish battle-standard.’

‘Who won?’

‘She did. I’d thrown down my chainsword, intending to make it a defeat she could brag about. As soon as it touched the ground she turned her hand-flamer on me. I nearly cooked in my plate.’

Caterin frowned. ‘And your revenge?’

‘What revenge?’ The grin was back again, almost a separate entity to the one who wore it. ‘I ran away. It wasn’t worth dying for.’

That wasn’t the truth, Caterin knew. The Captain was a spinner of tales, a master of exaggeration - any foe he had slain would grow ten feet, any defeat he suffered would be in the lightest terms. It was easy to forget the bloodstained history of the Marines Malevolent when it kept smiling at you. Asking for the truth might break that facade.

And it was necessary. She sought to understood Vale, as much as he had professed the same towards her. ‘What really happened?’

The Space Marine was silent. Water lapped at his midsection. ‘She was dying when we fought to her position,’ he said at last. ‘She’d come down amid the Warboss and his crew about to flee. They had to go through her to get out, to keep the green fight going. None of them did, but she was in pieces.’ He looked away. ‘I ordered the squad back. Put the standard in her hands. She thanked me. I was unworthy of it. If we’d fought harder, gotten there sooner - but we didn’t have the numbers or the weapons to make that push. A history of failure begetting failure, Madam Advocate. I hope your tale is warmer.’

‘It does not end in success, either.’

‘Happy endings are the stuff of prop-novels and rom-vids. That’s true of many things. See? We understand each other better already. The convent, you were saying.’

Caterin stood, sweeping her robes out, her legs stiff. If she’d stayed there a second longer, she’d have likely fossilised. The story made more sense if she walked, anyway - the cane remained behind. ‘The convent was… glorious. Greater than the Schola, or any I’d known before, and all dedicated to His worship. The Emperor looked down on all that was done there and saw that it was good. The sisters laughed in the halls, Captain. Do you understand? They would move in knots, in threes and fours, and they would _laugh_. They delighted in life.’

‘The Schola Progenium can be grim.’

‘Even better, the convent’s library was stocked to the brim with up-to-date tracts and codices of local customs and laws. The Hosters were not quite as well-equipped, and I was dutiful in my studies - they encouraged it, even, knowing that it would serve them better in the future. On occasion, their eldest daughter would join me. She was to assume control of their holdings on her majority, and was always so serious about broadening her education.’ Caterin recalled Farela Hoster well - the closest thing to a sister she’d had before or after her time at the Schola and Famulous convent. ‘They loved to have her there. I believe she learned more about politics in those halls of laughter than she did with her tutors. Practice over theory. A lesson I learned as well.’

The body-servants had finished, at last. They withdrew respectfully from the Captain to an alcove that contained the formal robes the Space Marine would wear to his audience with the Judges of the Seat. There was something in the glimpse of eyes beneath their hoods that Caterin could not quite place. Something that was almost envy.

‘You’re hedging, Madam Advocate,’ Vale spoke, patting at his face as though he was rediscovering it after the stubble’s removal. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘Her?’ A blush crept up Caterin’s own features. ‘Well. Yes. _Her._ ’

Vale laughed, the heartiness of it a shock. He gracefully dipped into the pool, arms working in broad strokes. The oils were sealed to his skin, and he had been immobile for too long. In motion, he ceased to be a graven statue, and much more the beast one imagined when thinking of the Emperor’s Angels of Death.

‘She was a Palatine,’ Caterin continued. ‘Her name was Vereena. She came to me - to us, I should say - one afternoon when Lady Hoster and I were deep in study on some obscure point of local succession lore. She - Vereena, that is - had heard that Lady Hoster was receiving something of extracurricular education, and stuck her nose in. As was her want. I have never met a person more determined to know _everything_ than her. It is something of that, certainly, that inspired my career.’

‘She sounds like she would have made a good Advocate herself,’ Vale called out before diving underwater, searching for the pool’s bottom. He emerged a few moments later, triumph broad across his face. ‘Did she encourage you in that direction?’

‘She did. One of the first things.’ It was Caterin’s turn to grin. ‘’You’re wasted on the Hosters,’ she said. Just like that. I thought Farela would either faint away or, or punch her. But she agreed. Their household had little for me to do. It was a stepping stone to a greater House, and everyone knew that but me. I felt… foolish.’

‘Happens to us all eventually, Madam Advocate.’

‘That decided it, of course. The Hosters gave me formal leave to study at the convent, on the concession that I assist with trade disputes, meetings, and other official business. Practice over theory, you see? I was honoured and humbled. Vereena took me under her wing immediately. And at first, I believe, that is all it was. She saw a spark and wished to fan it into a flame. The Emperor’s gifts are ours to nurture, after all. We grew closer, and eventually, I took a cell next to hers - it made good sense, for we spent much of our waking time together when she was not at drill or I attending to the needs of Host Hoster.’

Caterin stopped her pacing. Her slippers were half-soaked from her careless wander through the pool’s overspill. They would be ruined now, of course. She would have to send for another pair. She stooped to pull one off, then the other, before wriggling her toes in the thin layer of water. It had been so long since the convent, since those easy, simple days.

It could never be again. Could it? No. There were too many things, too little time.

‘We have it,’ the Captain said, voice low. ‘Time. And if we don’t take it, it’s gone, forever.’

She hadn’t been aware she’d spoken aloud. ‘I regret that, now.’ Caterin admitted. ‘I regret that I did not spend more of my time or more of my heart.’

‘I can counsel you on the former, not the latter, Madam Advocate.’

‘And they shall know no love, Captain Vale?’

‘There are many things they take from us in the Apothecarium.’

‘Do they…?’

The grin, the spectre of mirth that crept across the transhuman features, though what exactly it was a portent of, she could not say. ‘Don’t ask.’

She turned away from him. She heard the splash after a moment, a return stroke back across the pool. ‘It was a feast day morning. The capital was at rest - even the indentured, except the most critical, was paid without work. There was supposed to have been a parade, I think, that Vereena’s command was to attend. Some priest or another wished an armoured escort to puff up their self-importance. I was not of the militant, the details were unimportant to me, only that my mentor would not be at the convent that day. I thought she was gone already when I woke. But…’

‘But?’ came the reply from the pool’s far side.

‘But she was not. She sent for me. I remember it as though through… through some pleasant fog. The joy of seeing her when I had not expected to. She had summoned me to her cell. I came, expecting some wisdom, some lesson, and… I found her. Kneeling in prayer. I had never… never seen her without her armour before.’ Caterin shook her head, paced again, leaving wet footprints behind her. ‘She was beautiful. And… more than that. The way her bodyglove pulled tight to her body, the scars that the armour hid, the strength and certainty to her. And then she looked up, her prayer finished, and… her smile, Captain, do you understand? And she asked, not commanded. She _asked_. Me, to… help her with her armour. And I can feel it, the coolness of ceramite, the braces and buckles, the way they fitted to her…’

It had been a difficult moment for a member of the Sororitas, inexperienced in so many ways, in so many things. A thousand thoughts had raced through her head - most prominent that she should report, at once, to the Mistress of Penance for a thorough mortification. She had reeled from all the thoughts, the unclean daemons of her mind. She longed to tear herself away from Vereena, to confess her wicked desires, to submit to the punishment and the loss of a treasured… what? Mentor? Friend?

Lover, as her wretched thoughts would style it?

So the young Sister had stood, trembling, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes as Palatine Vereena had finished checking her armour’s seal integrity and gauntlet mobility. All as it should be.

The elder - and not, truth be told, by more than a few years, for life had made a veteran of the Palatine early - was better at concealing her own feelings. She was, also, far better at reading those of others.

With one hand, she had tilted young Caterin’s chin upwards, to make up for the difference in height the powered armour gave. With the other, she had gentled back the woman’s hair (for Caterin had been particular of the styled bob, even then, and it was forever coming loose).

And then she had kissed her.

A score of years away, Caterin bit her lip, aware and uncaring of the silence. Time had not seemed all that important then.

A soft hand on her shoulder. The Advocate blinked, looked up, climbing from the fugue of memory. She looked into the cowl of one of the body-servants and realised she had been wrong about what she had seen there earlier. She nodded. Gentle hands went to her waist from her other side, untying the sash and seal of her office. The robe swept from her shoulders, followed by undergarments. She circled the pool to the steps, her skin prickling with gooseflesh, aware of the eyes upon her - but uncaring. Unashamed.

The Space Marine waited there, water lapping at his knees, their eyes level. His hand was extended.

Caterin took it, feeling contours etched by a lifetime of service.

She stepped forward, aware of the body-servants moving behind her.

The Judges could wait a little longer.


	3. Of His Bones Are Coral Made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Judge is met. A trial begins.

The lower levels.

The lower mysteries, Caterin called them, with a smile that eased years from her. She had left her cane behind in the fogged bathing chambers, revealing it for the affectation it was - a disguise of infirmity and dotage that she had shed along with her troubles. Now she walked straight-backed and purposeful, her robes of grey replaced with those of white, the red-and-black symbol of the Inquisition above her heart.

Hall by hall, turn by turn, she led them down. Fewer people lingered here, fewer branches left the main thoroughfares. The gilded walls remained the same, and for that sameness, they conveyed the paralyzing lack of innovation that had mired the Imperium. As above, so below, without any trace of originality or thought.

Vale could have sneered at it, walking a half-step behind his companion, casual strides to match her determined pace. The Inquisition hung their pride on being charged with the empire’s defence by any means necessary, yet they scorned and banished radicals and those outside of organisational dogma swiftly. The Space Marine had seen the zeal displayed in hunting sinners of their own order.

The Advocate had found him a white robe as well, and sandals made for transhuman proportions. For a prison, the Seat didn’t lack for creature comforts.

‘I rarely come this far down,’ Caterin confessed as they descended another cold spiral stair. ‘Most hearings are held in the surface chambers, by lesser Judges or by vid-feed. The court at the Seat’s heart is a discomforting experience. And I do not mean just the walk.’

‘Right,’ Vale nodded, ‘The cold. Hard to run a proper heat exchange down here.’

‘That, and a matter of… preference. The Judges of the Seat keep suites at the very bottom. They are very old, very paranoid, with a raft of health issues and security concerns. They do not personally take cases, except those of great import or personal interest.’

‘Which am I?’

‘Your _Chapter_ ,’ she corrected, ‘Is likely of both. They will wish to hear a pleading of your recent actions. They will want to hear it in your own words. Do not defy them, Captain, whatever they ask. The Inquisition is not a monolith, but their judgement will be heeded by many. Be honest, be candid - I will intercept anything outside the scope of a proper query or matters of protocol.’

‘Protocol?’

‘They do not like being spoken back to, and you have something of a tendency to do so.’ Caterin ran an idle hand down the bannister as they reached the stair’s end. ‘The Judges would prefer this be an interrogation rather than a dialogue. It is the function of an advocate to remind them of that.’

A snort. ‘They ask the questions, they can’t complain about the answers.’

‘Truth to power.’

‘Say again?’

‘An ancient Terran doctrine,’ Caterin smiled. ‘The advisors of emperors and kings were protected by it. They could not be harmed for speaking the truth. Hiding from the reality of a situation is bad governance, and those in power will rarely seek out things that might upset them.’

‘Yet here I am.’

She halted a moment to look back at him, eyes twinkling in the low light. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

As the pair moved on, the halls became narrower, the walls darker, more obviously aged and stained with the rot with behind their pretty facades. Fewer servitor alcoves, then none at all. Only humans saw to the care of the Seat’s lowest floors, and only rarely.

Statues and tapestries became more common, concealing sentry guns and scanners. Likely hosted from Mechanicus hubs at critical junctures, watched at all times, security became more obvious the deeper they went - and more lethal. Vale saw weaponry he had only seen in the haziest fugue of hypno-indoctrination, digital armaments and phase fields. The action studs of holo-labyrinths that would trap anything in its activation zone in an endless loop of the same hallway, unknowing. He could smell the toxins that sheathed spine-launchers - scents familiar from close combat with fearsome Drukhari slavers.

And the cold. It seemed to seep from everywhere and brooked no resistance. Not enough to trouble a Space Marine, but it chattered the Advocate’s teeth, misted her breath. Vale felt it pass through his thick robes with no effort, seemingly into his body, his lungs, his heart. He was immune to most natural poisons, could resist the psychic suggestion of witch-kin by will alone, but still felt his limbs grow heavy, his eyelids droop.

The hall stretched on forever. He trudged on, unseeing, unfeeling, for an eternity.

Until the end.

And it was, in no uncertain terms, the end.

The Space Marine found himself shaking the lingering numbness from his thoughts on a plain of glass. No - not glass, too rigid for that. Crystalflex, inches thick, that reached out to far-off walls of black stone. The unseen and unnoticed door hissed closed behind him. Them, he reassessed, for Caterin was blinking her eyes beside him as though waking from a deep sleep. The look she gave him was almost apologetic.

‘So you can’t find your way back,’ she said. ‘Or out.’

It had been a good trick. The obvious weapons and devices to distract the mind and eye, to process all those lethal vectors while the real killer was already working its art. Vale could admire the subtlety, even as his transhuman physiology flooded his system with pre-combat stimulants, triggered by the sudden danger.

With an effort, he forced down the unconscious reaction. ‘Wise,’ he replied. ‘This is the Seat proper, then?’

‘Yes. Mind your manners.’

Pushing up from the Seat’s very centre was a tall block of obsidian, smooth sides etched with unknowable sigils and runes. Each face had a language of its own. It radiated alien menace, unlike to every other design and architectural conceit that had come before it. But perhaps that was the lie - perhaps the obelisk had been here before the Imperium, before mankind itself, until the species had thrust itself into the cosmos to render other planets in the desiccated image of their exhausted cradle-world.

How far away was it? The enormity of the chamber made it difficult to gauge, the strange dimensions, the unseen roof, the floor that flexed with each pace as though walking across the skin of a sleeping giant. Distant enough to be conceivably safe from a rush and lunge, but close enough for - what? Supernatural darkness clung to the pillar like a cloak, defeating the Space Marine’s enhanced senses.

There was a jutting outcrop. How had he not noticed that before? It had simply emerged, as though it had always been, but a photographic memory - even psy-addled - was not so easily deceived. And perched on that outcrop, a throne, black basalt, shade on shade, insignificant before the obelisk’s enormity.

A shape detached from the throne. Shoulders hunched like a vulture straddling a mound of carrion. Fingers that curled like talons over the throne’s arms, flesh that looked three days drowned.

‘Look down,’ a voice slithered from hidden vox-amplifiers, an insinuating squawk of a thing. ‘You are standing in your grave, Space Marine.’

Vale, against all good judgement, looked down.

Beneath the crystalflex flooring was a sea of bodies, each bound in an ebony coffin upon which their names and crimes were inscribed. Row upon row, they were layered upon each other - it was impossible to see how far down the crypts went, how many thousands of bodies lay below the court in tormented stasis. For it was not energy fields that held them unmoving, faces twisted by fear, fists frozen in a soundless panic - it was the cold. The hungering, all-consuming cold that rose up from deep below.

That thin barrier was all that stood between Vale and an eternity trapped in ice.

He looked up at the figure on the throne. ‘On, surely.’ He said.

‘What?’

‘On my grave, not _in_. An important distinction.’

The figure leaned forward into the light to reveal a rather peevish looking man of bald head, advanced age and squinting eyes. ‘I should have known,’ the Judge growled, ‘That the quarreler would find somebody just as contrary as she is.’

Caterin bowed low.

‘It wasn’t a compliment!’ snapped the Judge, before turning his watery gaze on Vale. ‘And you. You are of the old kind. Where are the Primaris?’ He blinked, settled back in his throne, crossing his arms. ‘I had hoped to see Primaris. They’re quite tall, you know.’

Vale stole a glance at Caterin, who gave nothing away. Was this a game? It was a poor one, if so.

Better to play along than call with a losing hand. ‘The old kind. We’ve served the Imperium for ten thousand years, but it’s only in the last hundred or so we’ve become ‘old’.’ A snort. ‘Belisarius Cawl should answer for that. Have him dragged down here.’

The Judge scowled. ‘Never. Cawl is a horrible thousand-faced grub. I have more important things to do than play with a mechanical _matryoshka_.’

‘Such as this.’

‘Well, yes, if you insist. You have been called here for answers, Captain Vale. More specifically, we invited your Chapter Master to attend and give an account of himself and the very thin line the Marines Malevolent currently walk. Who _is_ he, by the by? It felt foolish addressing an Inquisitorial summons ‘to whom it may concern’. No, don’t answer that, it’s not important. You are here, you have the requisite rank, you will do.’

‘A frank appraisal if I ever heard one.’

‘Very droll, Captain.’ The Judge leaned forward again, but there was no more trace of humour in his tone. The opponents had taken their first measure of each other. Now came the testing, the theoretical into practical. ‘I have questions. I have the answers. What are you here for, Captain Vale?’

‘Things that the official records don’t relate, I imagine.’

The Judge waved a hand in dismissal. ‘ _Everything_ is in those records, Captain. Have you ever heard it said, ‘The Mechanicus delete nothing’? It’s quite true. All our mistakes reduced to lines of sacred code, lingering long after our deaths, for our descendants and replacements to make sense of.’

‘But they’re missing something.’

‘Indeed, Captain. Let me tell you a secret: I killed Guiseppe Valentin. That is a mystery that the Ordo Hereticus have ground their teeth on for two centuries. But who was he? Why was it important? It means nothing to you to know that I did this thing. That is why I have asked to speak to you, Captain - for the sake of context. I think you will agree that is important.’

Vale blinked. ‘Who was he?’

‘Who?’

‘Guiseppe Valentin.’

‘A priest.’ The Judge hunched down on his throne, as if in contemplation. It was a long moment before he spoke again. ‘He would have been the next Sebastian Thor. But reformers need a cause to champion, wrongs to right, and one Age of Apostasy was quite enough. So the rebellion died with him. How is that, hm? Is the Imperium a better place for my actions? Is it appreciably worse?’

There was no answer from the Space Marine.

‘That is the doom of an Inquisitor,’ the Judge continued, ‘Looking back on a life of sacrifice, of survival, of plots foiled and worlds saved and realising that, outside the small scope of those particular lives, meant nothing. Context, on the other hand, Captain, means everything.’

‘You’re looking for a reason not to issue the _traitoris_ writ,’ Vale replied, understanding. ‘That judgement’s already been made, hasn’t it? This is the first and final appeal.’

‘Yes.’ A soft chuckle. ‘Do you wish to tell me how unfair that is, Captain? How men and women who live deep beneath the ocean in a hardened fortress know little of what a Chapter like yours must do to continue their service to the Throne?’

‘No. That would be…’

‘Weak?’

A grimace. ‘Yes. This position is our own. We earned this censure.’

‘Indeed. But I am not interested in the fleeting but undeniably satisfying punishment that may be visited upon your Chapter. I look to the future, Captain. I would know what the Marines Malevolent would do with a stay of execution, should I grant one.’

Vale looked to his advocate. Caterin nodded. ‘It’s within his power,’ she said. ‘Kallas is Judge Primary of the Seat. His word is quite literally law.’

Vale looked back to the figure and the throne. This presumptive, distracted man with his high-pitched voice and eccentricities wielding the full might of the Inquisition - well, he had seen stranger in positions of power. More than that, he recognised a strange kind of kinship. Seated on that rocky throne was somebody who held a tiny echo of the fathomless burden borne by Him on Terra. The Judge had experienced hopelessness and pain, the endless demands of service and duty, and was still prepared to see the merit hidden in the dark universe in which he toiled.

That took strength.

‘Then I'll provide any context I can,’ Vale said. ‘To the best of my ability.’

‘Good.’ The Judge did not smile. His face was not built for it.

But his shadowed eyes shone like falling stars.

‘Let us speak of Armageddon.’


	4. The Whirlwind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first blow of Armageddon was to erase the victory of the Second War. Hades Hive fell to orbital bombardment, and the invasion began in earnest.

Let us speak of Armageddon. The Fire That Rises. The Meeting-Place of Hosts.

It burns before the green armada wrests orbital control from the proud, doomed Imperial Navy. Vents open, fissures widen, thermals hiss and simmer in a terrestrial prelude to the violence soon to spill out across the ashen plains, the sprawling hives, the redoubts and bastions where every human eye is trained skyward. Slate-grey mixes with a curdled yellow, a smog-swollen expanse that stretches to every horizon.

Above that tumult, a streak of fire-bright crimson slashes down, through the atmosphere. An Imperial voidship falling from the heavens, spires cracked like broken teeth in a crooked skull. Engines fire, a fish desperately spinning flukes, but it is long past too late.

The first casualty of the Third War for Armageddon kisses the growling earth in a detonation that flattens earthworks for miles around. Thousands more join the ship’s crew in death, secondary explosions overtaking them as the vessel dies spread across salt and sulphur dunes.

The final transmission from the dead craft bounces across Armageddon’s active comm-network as a ghost relay, echoing hours later as Mechanicus adepts struggle to isolate and purge it from their systems. It is not the defiance of an Imperial captain shouting down the vox; it is not the dishonourable screams of the dead realising their fate. It is not Imperial at all, but rather the booming junk-send of the Orkish kill-krooza that tore out the Navy ship’s belly.

Mag Uruk Thraka, it repeats, spilling randomly out of vox-sets and civilian broadcast pylons. Each alien word is heavy, distinct, powerful. They are a hammer of doom. They are a drum-beat of extinction. They are the very pulse of conquest, rising from the fierce heart of Armageddon-that-was-Ullanor, quickening to the return of a conquerer.

Mag! Uruk! Thraka!

Across the planet, even the sternest human heart wavers.

Across the planet, the fire-mountains quake and roar their approval.

* * *

Hades Hive was no more.

It had been flattened from orbit by a bombardment of fiendish design: asteroids, broken ships and the occasional rok whose green inhabitants were overwhelmed by the frenzy of their kind. Twisted metal and ash were all that was left of the site where the Second War had turned for humanity, scattered across the plains.

Maknit had felt something in his stunted body when he looked down on the human ruins. Something all but unknown to a gretchin, particularly for one who’d survived a whole turn as Maknit had. Satisfaction. Pride. Not the roaring and beating of chests and clashing of teeth that a proper ork would have shown, but the smaller, keener emotion of their dubious cousin-species. Gretchin learned quick to keep their mouths shut and their heads down, not wanting to draw the attention of the bigger boys who’d stomp a grot for a bit of fun. They learned not to stand still for longer than necessary.

But still, Maknit gawped down Devil’s Ridge from an outlook over the petrified forest and sluggish, industry-choked rivers that oozed down from the heights.

A growl behind him broke the spell and Maknit hunched down in automatic submission, spindly legs ready coiling to scurry away. If you made yourself small, if you made yourself annoying to chase, the boys usually didn’t bother. With their blood up and the crushed Hive in the distance, their minds - never good for more than one or two things at once - were focused on getting to the big fight down the Ridge as fast as possible, in the best position possible.

Which is why the growl wasn’t followed with a smack or a grab. ‘Ya sighted any good scrap, ‘nit?’ rumbled the voice of Mek Wam. ‘Need circuits, special. Copper o’ any kind.’

‘In da sump, boss.’ Maksnit replied, his flinch lessening minutely. Meks went less in for idle destruction than others, being more focused on whatever techy project had caught their attention at the time but were still as capable of random, unfocused violence as any ork. ‘Saw some humie flyers. Be sure to have lotsa whatsits.’

A grunt of approval. ‘Yer right. Sooner the trukks can go, sooner we get to fight.’

There was silence for a moment. Magnit risked a half-turn to glance at the Mek, making sure not to lock eyes. There wasn’t any danger of that - Wam was looking over the gretchin’s head, sight fixed on the far-off ruins. The Mek wasn’t the biggest of his fellows, but he was close, and the flight to Armageddon had seen him bulk up substantially along with the rest. Wam had carved out grudging respect from the mob and the big bosses, being capable of both low-spec scrap wagons as well as more advanced shootas that produced a properly orky amount of rude dakka.

For all that, the Mek hadn’t been a bad boss to the coterie of gretchin he’d gathered about himself - at least, no worse than any other. They scavenged for choice bits and got to work on some of the designs that required smaller fingers and bodies, and for that reason, they stayed loyal. As loyal as any grot could be, anyway. Maknit’s fellows all tended to live a good sight longer than their kin in less useful positions.

That was a problem waiting to happen, of course. You didn’t need to be a weirdboy to see it coming. The landing on Armageddon had seen many of the weaker gretchin perish, and a shocking amount of others had disappeared into the petrified woods or foul waters or thin air, it seemed.

It put a target on the back of a Mek who had, so far, managed to keep most of his assistants alive. And on them as well: Maknit could feel eyes on them even now, jealous, angry eyes.

Wam seemed to notice it as well. He looked down at the gretchin. ‘The boys giving you trouble?’

‘Not yet, boss.’

‘You think soon, then?’

Maknit nodded.

‘Hrm.’ The Mek turned a baleful eye on the orks who were starting to clump about the forest edge, tarrying in their shifting of boxes, flags or simply stalking. Most turned away, but a few of the bigger boys back sneered instead. ‘Lessons, then. Too many of ya have gone to be usual. Might be time to ask around.’

‘Ah, if you say, boss.’

‘Got a thought, ‘nit?’

‘Not my place…’

‘I say it is.’

‘Could be,’ Maknit swallowed, long ears dipping low as he spoke, ‘Could be humies, boss. See us working, might be thinking, ‘those big orks are too tough for us, but the little ones, yeah, we could take that.’ Boys don’t notice gretchin until we’re gone, boss. Lot of us gone now, though.’

Wam grunted. ‘Sneaky. A proppa humie plan. Won’t work on da Waaagh that’s going.’ He shook his head. ‘Won’t work. Just make the boys nastier when they ain’t got a gretchin to cook the squig or oil the shoota.’

‘Yer right, boss.’

‘Course I’m right. Don’t mean I won’t keep all ears. And learn the lookers some respect.’ Wam’s eyes were burning fierce now, and even the largest of the potential challengers were backing off - but he’d marked them already, their faces, their scars, their war-paint. The Doks would have plenty of work to do that night. ‘Best if you scurry now, ‘nit. Sort the circuits from dem flyers. I’ll handle this end.’

‘Right, boss.’

Maknit turned to thread his way downslope, but the Mek’s voice called him to a stop.

‘’Nit?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Don’t get stomped.’ A toothy grin. ‘Grots are short round ‘ere, if ya hadn’t heard.’

‘Grots is always short, boss.’ Maknit replied.

The Mek’s booming laughter sped him on his way.

* * *

Any camp of orks was a ramshackle thing at the best of times, shacks and pens and scaffolds crammed together and strewn about like the morning after a big one. But this one was on the move, constantly being moved down the scrubby mountain that the mob had landed on, eating up the landscape as it went.

The petrified wood went into belching burnas, the volcanic topsoil into squig pens, and every struggling growth - root, shoot or shroom - went into the gut of whichever of the boys was lucky enough to stumble on it. There wasn’t much in the way of meat to be had - successive wars and pollution had seen to that - but there were mole-things burrowed underground with tough shells and sharp claws for the diligent, and flocks of black-feathered grub-feeding birds that crowded the forest branches that at least made for good target practice.

Maknit scrabbled through the chaos, between mobs of grumbling boys, under shootas being discharged randomly into the sky and around the shouting of bosses and herders both. The place stank like stepping into a mouth full of rotten teeth, but that wasn’t purely the doing of orks - Armageddon’s atmosphere would never be free of the stink of sulfur.

The agile gretchin kept an eye out for any of his fellows or Meks that his boss knew, but saw none of the latter and few enough of the former, their long ears down as they hunched along. It was a bad look, this. They were meant to be deferential, but not so cowed they couldn’t do their jobs properly.

The occasional fearful look came Maknit’s way, but not even a half-wave of greeting.

It only served to make him worry more about the idea that he’d shared with Wam. It wasn’t like the camp was guarded properly - there was no reason to, the humies had no intention of fighting a mob head-on, and Armageddon had no wildlife dangerous enough to interest an ork long enough to stand picket. It wasn’t like the gretchin couldn’t perform the time-honoured tradition of running for it if they didn’t feel like they were going to see out another day.

None of them was, as far as Maknit could tell. Which meant even the lowest runt felt that another day with a mob running full-pelt to Waaagh was safer than the scraggly forest.

Nobody challenged him as he slid down the brief half-dug slope that indicated the camp’s furthest edge. The loam was strangely soft and spongy beneath him, feet sinking a little as he walked, light-bodied as he was. Even a blind squig could see a trail out here: deep prints where the mob had been, and flat brown where they hadn’t. There wasn’t even the hint of foliage or burnt leaves to mark the soil. Gork only knew how long ago the trees had shed their skins for good.

There was nobody out this side of the camp. No reason to be, of course. But it still triggered that gretchin paranoia - the itching at the back of his neck that said a choppa was coming. Maknit had learned well to listen to that little itch, and the relative isolation so close to a rowdy mob felt strangely surreal.

It also gave him a strange realisation. The boys were staying nice and close together, too. Whether they understood it or not - because the mob always stuck together when it was time for a Waaagh, when the battle-lust was on - they were tighter than usual, getting in each other's faces and business. Orks weren’t meant to be so close off the fighting-field.

No wonder no other clever Mek had picked over the flyers yet. They had an itch of their own, no doubt.

Heading back would be a certain beating, though, which was certainly not preferable to whatever uncertain pain was out in the woods. Maknit slipped through copses of bare-boned trees towards the drooling sump that crept down the mountainside.

It was a thick, goopy thing, the banks swelled with black growths that not even an ork would eat. Industrial refuse, chemicals and oils and other castoffs from the forge complexes that scabbed Armageddon’s grey hide. It gurgled fitfully in its yellowed passage around all kinds of obstructions: heavy chunks of unidentifiable metal, rocks, the occasional bloated corpse of the incautious or foolhardy.

The prickling was fierce at the edge, Maknit’s toes stung by the seep.

‘Hello?’ he whispered. Nothing answered, which wasn’t comfortable.

He found a length of broken branch nearby, and prodded the water’s surface gingerly, trying to test for depth. A gentle suction tried to pull the wood from his hands, but he pressed it in deeper, looking for a solid connection until he had to give up or take a bracing plunge into the sump himself.

If the mucky river had a bottom, it was beyond a gretchin’s reach. Good knowledge to have if he had to dare it to reach any choice piece of scrap - and crossing it off as a possible hiding-place if danger threatened.

The stick smoked slightly when Maknit pulled it out. He let the water have it - he could always find another and started downstream. The humie flyers were boxy things with great big engines, further down and away from the camp’s line of descent. There’d be no mistaking them, and he could perform a new depth-test when he got there. Maknit felt vaguely chuffed: it was this kind of thinking that made him one of a Mek’s assistants.

It was also this kind of thinking that had him out on his own, too. A very fine shiver went through his small body.

‘Hello?’ he tried again, feeling foolish and frightened in equal measure.

If there were boys about, they’d not need sneaking. There were a few kommandos in the mob, but they kept mostly to themselves and could always be found about camp, thieving from slower orks or hiding in the drops waiting for a good scare. Gretchin were well beneath their notice.

The boles of the trees, the deep soil, even the stinking river - those might be the places a grot might find a good hiding-place, though.

‘Oi!’ Maknit said, louder. ‘It’s ‘nit. You out there? Snarsnap? Kutnail?’

Other Meks hadn’t been as fortunate as Wam. Some good gretchin, grots that Maknit had known for a turn or more, had gone missing as well - and their bosses weren’t the kind to bust heads without cause. It was a long hope, but maybe they’d just gotten lost, or turned about in the forest, or just had enough of the mob for the nonce but they’d come back…

Maknit clung to that thought tighter than he should have. He called the names a little louder than he should have.

So he didn’t hear the black shape that slithered out of the river, something that should have been too big even for the relative depths of the industrial sump. He didn’t hear the thing approach, carefully stepping on the deepest soil: light enough to bear its weight properly, but deep enough to mask the sound of movement.

The gretchin didn’t realise anything until the thing got between him and the sun, the hulking shadow falling on Maknit like an eclipse, a huge fist swinging down.

And by then it was too late, of course.

It had been too late ever since Maknit had left the camp.

* * *

The bluster of birds brought him back to consciousness. That, and a sense of movement: the forward motion, the left-right rocking of steps. Maknit kept completely still: the first rule, the first thing any gretchin who wanted to last more than a turn learned, was that you didn’t make fun. You didn’t cry out or run away or beg. You went limp. You made yourself an unsatisfying toy and hoped the mob would laugh, maybe kick you, then go away.

Whatever had him was big. Not as big as a proper nob, or Wam, or even some of the larger boys, but that was worse. The smaller ones always had something to prove. They’d step on you just for mean fun. They were too dumb to know how useful you were and too vicious to let themselves be tricked.

Maknit opened one eye an experimental fraction.

He was looking up at the petrified trees. A court of the black-feathered birds was looking down on him with undisguised hunger. They were passing the call from beak to beak.

‘Mag!’ they cried. ‘Uruk! Thraka!’

Clever creatures.

Something broad and hard is digging uncomfortably into his back: too blunt to be anything but armour, but too smooth and layered to be a boy’s battered leather. For a brief, thrilling moment Maknit wonders if he’s been grotknapped, stolen by a rival tribe with an eye for useful oilers. The competition for the eye of the Prophet is fierce, and Gork and Mork are leering down on Armageddon to see who’ll have the best and biggest fights. It’s not just the vast mobs that need tinkerers and work-crew, but the big tribes, the specialists whose names are known even to Maknit.

That’d make good sense. It wouldn’t even be beyond the brutal cunning of one of those warleaders. They’d have congratulated themselves for thinking up such a scheme.

It is not theirs. Maknit is wrong.

The smooth walk stops. More of his senses return. And he realises just how wrong he is.

He can smell them before he can see them. The stink of their fear. Not the normal kind, not the crawling terror that has them cringe under an ork’s boot, but the long and extended terror of a torture that no ork has the bloody-mindedness or patience for. The blood is old. Weeks old, perhaps, and constant. The terror has mingled with it for longer than that.

And it is familiar. Not simply in a species way.

Maknit is cast down on the ground hard enough to rattle the brains in his skull, to shatter his left leg and make standing - let alone flight - impossible. It is not soft, volcanic loam here. It is a deliberate construction of stone and hard, hard wood. The gretchin’s blurred sight takes in a stacking of stones that means nothing to him but has undeniable significance: he has seen the idols and altars of the madboys in the camp, and this has a strange relation to them. It is not worshipful. It is too blunt for that.

The crying begins to filter in. The soft sobbing. He raises his head to look around him, vision clearing, the pain of a shattered limb reaching his foggy mind.

He is in the company of friends. Though some of them are difficult to recognise.

Pinned to the trunks of trees surrounding the stone are gretchin. Shafts of whittled stone are thrust through their outstretched arms, a single piece through their crossed feet. They hang in whimpering totems. Some are more abused than others, but there is a pattern to them. The older survivors bear more clinical wounds, almost examinations or autopsies, while the newer contain far more corpses, and appear to have been mauled by some wild beast.

He has spent enough time in service to a Mek to recognise the signs of experimentation. Of testing tolerances.

Maknit makes to crawl away, the instinct stronger than anything else. His hand closes on a bone. One in a small pile. There are teeth-marks right into the marrow of it. Not the snapping fangs of an ork, but blunter, made for crushing.

He cannot move any further. He feels the tears prick at the corner of his eyes. He feels the drumming beat of his heart, rising in sympathy.

And he hears the thing that threw him.

It is not laughing like an ork would be to see its prey limping away, or in the casual sadism applied to a defeated opponent. It is saying something in its alien tongue, something that sounds like the idle chatter of Wam at work, an engineer commenting on some process. Maknit does not want to look at it. He does not want to know. He has seen enough already.

He looks anyway.

The thing is clad in black carapace, with trimming more sump-yellow than golden. A variety of knives and tools are strapped to its waist, along with pouches and pockets and other arcane tools. Many of them are coated in blood or worse. The thing’s face is blunt and flat, bristled with black hair about the chin and the round curve of its skull. The eyes are the most terrible part.

They are not the roaring red of an ork at war or play. They are an icy blue, calm, detached, distant and untouchable. Maknit forgets the other rule, at the last.

He begs.

And to the thing, it looks like this:

The gretchin squeals in a crude alien tongue. It has not the resilience of its larger, brutish kin - it is not made of their deadened nerves and war-hunger. It would escape this suffering if it could.

Perhaps this time, he’ll start with the feet first and work his way up.

Scout Vale of the Marines Malevolent, 10th Company, allows himself the smile that comes before hard work and a good meal.


End file.
